Disney will release Avengers and Iron Man 3

[Figs]

Universal did Hulk though, not Paramount.

My mistake. Either way I'm glad this is happening.

 

[TheVileOne]

Paramount wasn't really funding the movies though. I think the older movies were funded from the Merrill Lynch credit deal. Paramount did the P&A and distribution for Iron Man and Iron Man 2 and will do the same for Thor and Cap. They had made a deal to also release Avengers and Iron Man 3, but that was like right before Disney bought Marvel. So now Disney paid out Paramount so they get to release everything as well.

 

[babykhris]

I thought all the Marvel Studio projects (including The Hulk) were self-financed and Paramount and Universal were just distributors.

 

[TheVileOne]

They were, I meant Universal released/distributed The Incredible Hulk. So the poor marketing and advertising was more on their end.

 

[nick p]

more money for Disney

 

[mclay18]

I'm waiting for Jamie to post something like this:

"We were right, b***hes."

 

[Silvermoth]

hmm, I wonder if there will be an issue about Cap and Thor being with Paramount and Disney having Iron Man and the Avengers. Still not completely convinced the Disney buyout is a good idea but we'll see.

 

[Crockett]

Paramount will distribute Thor and Cap, but if they ever want to do a sequel for it Disney will be the one to distribute the movies.

 

[mclay18]

The numbskulls posting on SHH! page for the Disney deal think that since Disney bought the distribution rights to IM3 and Avengers think they can do the same with X-Men and Spider-man... please.

Fox and Sony's deals extend far beyond what Paramount had. For example, they have story input, how much money they can make the movie, et al than just marketing and distribution deals.

 

[Figs]

I'm waiting for Jamie to post something like this:

"We were right, b***hes."

Right about what exactly??

As soon as Disney bought Marvel it didn't take a genious to realize they would be releasing these films...they own them after all.

 

[Scarlet Spider]

IESB Exclusive: Disney Targets Sony and Fox Franchises

Today, Marvel confirmed what IESB reported back in February of this year, it was here on IESB the news first broke that Disney had plans to completely re-negotiate the standing deal between Marvel and Paramount. At the time, it was denied, but as the news today confirms, we were right. Now the IESB can break the news on what Disney is hoping to do next to continue building upon their Marvel Empire.

There are four Marvel franchises that Disney does not control and word is they want them back. Three are controlled by 20th Century Fox and one by Sony.

Let's start with the Fox controlled Marvel properties.

DAREDEVIL - The movie wasn't received well by critics or fans for that matter, but, it did make its money back in box office receipts, DVD sales and TV broadcasting rights - it made close to $180 million at the worldwide box office alone with a budget of approx $78 million. And while Daredevil isn't considered a first tier character, the Mouse House wants Matt Murdoch and his alter ego Daredevil back under the control of Marvel Entertainment.

Of course it's not just Daredevil under Fox's thumb, Elektra, Bullseye and Kingpin were also part of the deal. And it's entirely possible that under said rights deal, Fox may have a handful of other characters that haven't appeared yet that could possibly be brought to the big screen as well.

As it was reported here first on IESB and regurgitated on several other outlets, 20th Century Fox is currently in development on a reboot of Daredevil.

FANTASTIC FOUR - It's by far one of the most beloved comic book series of all time. Fox has released two Fantastic Four films, both have done extremely well at the box office ($620 million) plus DVD sales and TV broadcast rights. Perhaps not so well with critics and fans.

The budget for both films were around $230 million combined, $100 million for the first and $130 for the second.

Insiders are telling IESB Disney would love to get Fantastic Four back under their control and that this series, above all, fits the Disney mold the best being the first superhero family.

Fox is currently moving forward with its Fan Four/Silver Surfer reboot as its was first reported here on the IESB.

X-MEN - This one, by far, is the biggie, the X-Men franchise and the entire X-Men Universe. The four X-Men films have brought in a staggering $1.54 billion dollars plus what is believed to be close to another $500 million in DVD sales and TV broadcast rights. That's approximately 2 billion dollars...a lot of money to say the least. All four films had a combined budget cost of approx $500 million dollars.

The X-Men franchise is huge, there are 100's of characters in this universe and 20th Century Fox has a solid lock on this property. Besides the known characters of the films i.e. Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Rogue, Professor Xavier, Magneto, Sabretooth, Mystique plus the countless other heroes and villains that have appeared in the Fox feature films, besides those, there are so many other characters in the X-Men universe that they haven't used prominently...yet.

These include, just to name a few, fan favorites Bishop, Cable, Banshee, Blink, Havok, Quicksilver, Psylocke and Deadpool (whose spinoff is hopefully coming soon with Ryan Reynolds reprising the role). The X-Men universe is probably one of the largest hero/villain heavy universes out there, it's literally immense when you start to think about all of the inhabitants. Any of these names can easily be the core of a new X-Men team or spinoff.

20th Century Fox is moving full steam ahead with X-Men: First Class, X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2, Deadpool and other spinoffs currently in the works.

Disney will never and I mean never, ever, not in a 100 years, get this property back under the control of Marvel Entertainment, just not going to happen. Fox owns all of these properties for perpetuity, in other words, for-ev-ver....for-ev-ver...

Moving on to TV. If the feature films angle doesn't work, can Disney/Marvel possibly move forward with live action TV series based on the Daredevil, X-Men or Fantastic Four characters? Simply put "NO."

Fox has sued Marvel once before regarding the "Mutant X" fiasco. In those court documents a few interesting tidbits of the original rights deal are revealed.

They mean business -

In October 1993, Marvel and Fox signed an agreement (the "1993 Agreement") pursuant to which Marvel licensed to Fox all the rights that Fox may require in order to produce, distribute, exploit, advertise, promote, and publicize theatrical motion pictures based on the "X-Men" comic book series. The "X-Men" comic book series, referred to in the Agreement as the "Property," includes the X-Men Characters, specifically the "core" Characters and the Characters of the "X-Universe";  their origin stories;  storylines from individual comic books;  and "all other elements relating to the Property and the Characters."   The rights granted to Fox included "the right to use the title (or subtitle or portion of the title) of the Property or any component of the Property as the title of any Picture or related exploitation."   The Agreement reserved all television rights to Marvel, subject to a proviso, critical to Fox's pending contract claim, that Marvel would not "produce, distribute or exploit or authorize the production, distribution or exploitation of any live-action motion picture" without Fox's consent (the "Freeze").

From what we've been told, the lawyers at Disney have poured over the "Mutant X" case to find some wiggle room, but, due to the settlement between Fox and Marvel, it looks like Disney is **** out of luck. Their only hope is if Fox is willing to hand over rights to characters Disney would like to use. But, word on the street is Fox has made it very clear that they will not let go of any of the properties under their control for any live action medium.

Unlike Sony, we've been told by Fox Co-Chairman Tom Rothman and other Fox execs in the past, that they own the rights to their Marvel properties for perpetuity. But, we've also been told that if it ever came to the point where they were going to lose any property they own because of failing to have a movie in production, they would simply produce a low budget, straight-to-DVD feature and "four wall it," which basically means, stick it in any theater to fulfill their theatrical release clause.

So even though those Mickey Mouse lawyers have spent plenty of hours going over those Fox contracts it appears that they are rock solid.

So what about Sony's Spider-Man franchise? Same thing as the Fox deal, the contracts protect the studio 100% but they do have to continue to make movies with the Marvel characters on a regular basis. Spider-Man is not going anywhere, that also includes Venom.

Bottom line, the Sony and Fox contracts are rock solid. They will both keep their respective properties under their control. But you can be sure because they have plenty of money to spend, Disney will still have those Mickey Mouse lawyers looking for a loop hole....and to that I say, good luck!

 

[mclay18]

As soon as Disney bought Marvel it didn't take a genious to realize they would be releasing these films...they own them after all.

I thought since that Marvel and Paramount made their deal to market and distribute six Marvel-owned films, Paramount would've had a rock-solid clause barring Disney from re-obtaining the rights (even though well over 90% of the profits already went to Disney when IM2 came out). You know, a similar 100% solid clause that barred Disney from exploiting any contract loopholes.

 

[tecnowraith]

This in was part of an article that was saying the same thing:

Think about it...

 

[Dark Raven]

Disney may not be able to buy back the rights to the Fox properties, but is there any way they could buy Fox? Fantastic Four does seem best suited to Disney more so than Fox.

 

[Raiden]

I guess X-Men and Spider-man are lost causes and even the best lawyers Disney can hire won't be able to find a loophole in those agreements. But I'm hoping Disney can at least get both Daredevil and Fantastic Four back, but they have to do something before Fox gets those reboots into place. Fox probably will claim that they have fulfilled the contractual agreement by merely hiring a writer to pen the script of the reboot, but I hope Disney will be able to show that it isn't enough and get the rights back this way. I really want Pixar to have a chance to tackle a Fantastic Four movie, and it means Disney has to get FF somehow.

 

[Raiden]

Disney may not be able to buy back the rights to the Fox properties, but is there any way they could buy Fox? Fantastic Four does seem best suited to Disney more so than Fox.

I think News Corp. (which is the conglomerate that owns Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Channel, Fox Searchlight, Wall Street Journal, Fox Sports, Fox News, and all their affiliates) is simply too big for any company to buy, even if Murdock decides to sell his company.

 

[TheVileOne]

News Corp. also owns IGN and Rotten Tomatoes.

 

[WarBlade]

No mention of Ghost Rider...

I can imagine it now: Ghost Rider 3D: Vengeance for ALL the Family! t:

 

[TheVileOne]

Well Sony has Ghost Rider and they are rushing a lame sequel out there to keep the rights. They don't want to let go of Ghost Rider either.

 

[babykhris]

Can anyone confirm this info

This is an overview of how the current Marvel film rights shape out (besides what has already been said regarding Disney and Paramount):

Sony and Fox:
*Sony owns Men in Black from a deal that precedes Marvel's purchase of Malibu. Note that Marvel got proceeds from the film but their name was nowhere on either of the first two in that franchise.

*Spider-Man and Ghost Rider, on the other hand, are licensed to Sony. Sony has a window within to make each picture, which is why Ghost Rider 2: Spirit pf Vengeance is now slated for production quite soon. If production isn't on track, then all rights revert back to Disney, and Sony would be out the initial investment in the design which they hope to offset the costs of a guaranteed-lower-performing sequel.

Overall, Marvel really has no control over Sony or Fox's work. Sony and Fox does however, both consult heavily with the publisher to ensure that there will be mutual promotion and quality control with the fan base. A vocal anti-film fan base can hurt a film even before opening.

From my understanding, Fantastic Four and Daredevil will need to be bought from Fox. Avi Arad sold them the complete rights to both franchises, as well as X-Men, just to get the film slate going.

Universal: Universal licensed Hulk and Namor. So far, the 2003, Ang Lee directed Hulk movie was produced & distributed by Universal. Meanwhile, the 2008 Louis Leterrier directed Incredible Hulk movie was produced by Marvel and distributed by Universal — a major difference. Eric Bana was also prevented from being in the 2008 movie because he was contracted to Universal rather than Marvel itself. As for Namor, no contracts are tied to the property at all at the moment. Therefore, it's most likely that Universal will just distribute or sell the rights for distribution back to Disney like Paramount did.

Lionsgate: After the poor box office performance of Punisher: War Zone, Lionsgate no longer wanted the property and the rights have subsequently reverted back to Marvel.

New Line: The Blade rights are with New Line, which is in return, owned by Warner Bros. Given the complete lack of movement on that property since the television series ended in 2006, it's easy to suspect that the license has since reverted back. However Marvel likely has no desire to move forward, not with other properties much more attractive at the moment.

 

[Son of Coul]

Sounds about right. Those five particular franchises (SM, GR, X-Men, FF, DD) seem pretty much screwed. Maybe GR has some pull if Sony doesn't manage to get it made in time. I feel almost like they wanna lose the property, but want Disney to make a big offer for it.

 

[TheVileOne]

Here's the thing though. If you lose a property like that and someone else is more successful with it, you suddenly have huge egg on your face.

 

[sarawinslet1]

Its really good to know that Disney will release Avengers and Iron Man 3.

 

[Poetic Chaos]

Marvel still gets money from Spider-Man, X-Men, etc. films though right? If so, wouldn't it work on in their favor to have other studios produce those films so they can have multiple releases in a year rather than the single film they produce annually?

 

[bubbadoom]

I have no idea what the percentage Marvel gets from Sony and Fox, but I am sure it is VERY little. I think that was one reason they formed their own studio, so they could stand to profit as greatly as Sony had - and to have the creative control their deals with the other studios did not allow them.